


The King's Passing

by OneForMischief



Series: The Misadventures of Darcy Lewis and Agent Not-So-Dead [9]
Category: Black Panther (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU of an AU, F/M, Kate Bishop - Freeform, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, tony stark - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneForMischief/pseuds/OneForMischief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy travels to Wakanda to be at T'Challa's deathbed and help ease his passing. In the end, he asks to see a different life.</p><p>You really only need to have read through "From Wakanda With Love" to read this.</p><p>This is for everyone who wanted a Darcy/T'Challa ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The King's Passing

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:
> 
> ìfowórikú - natural death at old age, considered a blessing  
> Mon'ife e - I love you

Darcy counts to five and takes a deep breath before she pushes the door open.

“T’Challa? Are you awake?”

The aging king is in bed, as he has been for over a week this time. At one hundred and six, time is finally catching up to him. He cannot stand even for her now.

“There’s my queen,” he murmurs tiredly, trying to prop himself up. “They said you were away, but I knew you would come. You would not leave me before our honeymoon. You love me that much, I said, and I was right.”

“Of course you were,” she soothes, sitting on the edge of the bed and pressing a kiss to his temple to hide the tears she has to blink away.

* * *

 

“I’m so sorry, Aunt Darcy,” T’Chaka says, wrapping her in a hug as soon as he sees the look on her face.

“This is really it,” she sobs, clinging to his shirt.

* * *

 

“I always thought I could convince him to take Extremis someday. Later. That there would be time,” she murmurs to her mother as they sit in the tree together.

“No, you didn’t,” Bast says, not unkindly.

“No, I didn’t,” Darcy agrees with a heavy sigh. “But I hoped.”

“We all hope not to lose the ones we love, little child,” Joanna replies, squeezing her tightly.

* * *

 

The walk back through the village is hell.

The people adore her still, though only the elderly remember her short time there. They call her the Immortal Queen, or the Goddess-Queen, depending on the religiousness of the speaker, and it breaks her. She wants to shake each and every one of them when they bow and tell her that they pray for ìfowórikú for their king.

She wants to tell them that she wants nothing less than that. That she would make him immortal and take away his ìfowórikú in a heartbeat, if only he would let her.

* * *

 

The new temple has a sculpture of her at the altar. Not of her alone – it’s Darcy, kneeling on the ground with her arms around Abeni’s neck, with the words ‘Daughters of Bast” engraved below – but still, it’s disconcerting. She isn’t truly sure why she’s there, anyhow, given that the goddess is her mom and prayer will not help T’Challa now.

The priest is young, and she only knows him from occasional visits, but she likes him, and he does an admirable job of carrying on with the service without letting the fact that he will soon be the first to preside over a king’s funeral in over eighty years weigh down the message of hope. Darcy thanks him afterward, and he bows deeply and solemnly as she’s found only priests do now.

“He is a good man. The world will cry when he passes,” he says, but she knows better and cannot be comforted.

* * *

 

“Good morning,” Darcy says softly, waiting for T’Challa to give some sort of clue as to where he is in relation to time.

“I am surprised he let you come,” he chuckles weakly, and he doesn’t bother to try to sit up.

“He knows that to make rules is to ask me to break them,” she grins saucily. “He wasn’t born yesterday.”

“None of us were, though you still look it. What is it they call you?”

“The Immortal Queen,” she says with a fond roll of her eyes. “And you know that, you imp. Scoot over, I won’t climb over you.”

“Not even once, for old times’ sake?”

“T’Challa!” she shrieks, feigning shock just to hear him laugh.

* * *

 

“He’s good today,” she says brightly over dinner, but T’Chaka only looks at her with pity in his eyes.

* * *

 

The next day, T’Challa thinks she’s a maid and sends her away.

She goes to the spot where they took their vows and cries until sunset.

* * *

 

He asks for her the following morning, and he looks better, though she remembers that Shuri did the same thing just before she died.

* * *

 

“Why do you come every time?” he asks on the sixth day.

“I don’t want…I want you to have somebody here who won’t miss you because you were their king. Who will just miss _you_ ,” she answers, stroking his hair.

“I have missed you,” he smiles. “Show me a story from the old days.”

* * *

 

She shows him the soccer game, and the day that she found Abeni, and then the day he caught her on the stairs, and they fall asleep together afterward.

When she wakes on the seventh day, she knows that it’s the last. Today, the light in his eyes will go out, and, sixty-four years after their divorce, she will lose her husband.

* * *

 

The priest comes and goes, telling them that now is the time to say goodbye.

Darcy is last, at T’Chaka’s declaration that the king will go as peacefully as he can, with only his queen at his side.

* * *

 

“I am going to die, they say,” he whispers. “It is about time.”

“Shut up,” Darcy laughs weakly.

“You can’t shut me up. I am the king and so on,” he smiles. “I have something to ask of you.”

“Yes, I’ll get the –“

“Not that. You know that. No, I want…I want you to show me a different life, with you, if there was one. I want to die that death.”

She takes his hands and pushes.

* * *

 

In the hospital, Darcy tells Tony that she wants to sign her half of everything over to him, and when he tries to refuse, she doesn’t take no for an answer. She tells him, instead, that she wants a real chance at something with T’Challa, and that if that means that she has the wealth of one nation at her disposal instead of two or three, it’s an easy sacrifice.

T’Challa tries to talk her out of it, too.

“Would you just shut up and kiss me?” she quips.

* * *

 

The Wakandans, as in the life they lived, worship Darcy to an almost overwhelming point at first. She still shops in the marketplace, attends temple, and chases Yejide through every mud puddle the cat can find, and it doesn’t take long for things to settle down.

T’Challa adores her, and though he is permitted to take a second wife because she can’t have children, he refuses.

Instead, every orphan in their home village comes to live in the palace.

* * *

 

Nobody is there to stop the Civil War.

Nobody is there to help Kate Bishop.

* * *

 

When Shuri’s son is born, they fly to New York to be there and T’Challa cries a bit when he first holds him.

“What is his name?” he asks.

“T’Chaka Phillip Barton,” Shuri replies, beaming up at Clint.

* * *

 

Darcy pushes faster as she feels him fading.

Visits from Tony and her mother, wars, birthdays, anniversaries, festivals, fights, sex, romance, sarcasm. She shows him everything that she can, and then she sees both endings coming.

* * *

 

In this life and all others, T’Challa dies in his bed at one hundred and six, with Darcy’s lips on his and her tears in his eyelashes.

“Mon'ife e,” she cries.

* * *

 

It rains on the day of the funeral, and when Darcy is asked to speak before the ashes are sprinkled, she knows what to say.

“When T’Challa and I were not yet engaged, and Abeni died, he told Princess Shuri that I cried more than it rained. Today, for him, we all do.”

* * *

 

She and T’Chaka say their goodbyes on the airstrip early the next morning.

“You’re a king now, T’Chaka,” she reminds him. “So no more dangerous adventures.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agrees, trying to smile.

“Oh, come here,” she says, throwing her arms around him. “The first time I held you, your mother told me that you looked like a king, you know. She was right.”

“I hate this,” he sniffles.

“I know, honey. No good man would feel differently.”

* * *

 

When she gets home, her husband is waiting for her.

“He’s gone,” she sobs, flinging herself into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she knows that he means it in his own way. “He was a good man, and a good king.”

“I’m sorry I missed your birthday.”

“It is very likely that we will have hundreds more to remember or to miss. I would not have you resent me over one of them. Not in the face of this.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs into his chest, and it’s a sign of how much he loves her that he knows that’s not what she’s thanking him for.

“I would do it over again without question,” he promises.


End file.
